Saudi youth should strive for a thorough education because they will be the Kingdom’s future leaders, according to Saudi scholars.

“They must study hard and gain as much knowledge as possible to become competent practitioners in their chosen fields of endeavor and be ready to take over positions at the helm of the government when the time comes,” they said.

The scholars were reacting to a news report which said that the growth of the Internet and easily accessible knowledge had spoiled the social and cultural life of the Kingdom.

The news report said: “People have started judging each other like celebrities are evaluated on TV. Everyone is now constantly concerned about what others think.”

Condemning the excessive use of the Internet by the youth, the scholars said: “The Saudi youth have joined the Internet bandwagon where they surf the net to read about national and international events, politics, business and industry instead of reading books which would help them form an opinion and provoke thought.” They added that now the youth resort to Google to look up a meaning of a word instead of making sense of it from a context, thus internalyzing it.

“There is no short cut to learning and it is important for the youth to balance their time wisely between studies and entertainment,” said Mohsin Sheikh Al-Hassan, a Saudi author and TV host.

He added that in his day, it was customary to pore over books for long periods. “We trained our minds to absorb as much information as possible,” he said. “We were often lost in the wonderful world of books and learnt to admire the literary masters,” he noted.

However, the current situation is not hopeless, according to Al-Hassan. “School teachers and parents can join forces to help children to balance their time between the different subjects and regulate Internet use.”

Stressing that too much of anything was bad, he said that the key lay in moderation.